It’s time to get reacquainted with one of the best indie pop groups our region has ever known, Buildings Breeding. The lush, melodic-sounding group fronted by married duo Chris and Melanie Larsen will celebrate their 10-year anniversary on Thursday, Sept. 3, 2015, at Press Club. “Since 1998 I’ve recorded: 270 solo songs, 25 Holy Diver songs, 96 Buildings Breeding songs and 19 Flowerss songs,” Chris recently wrote on his Facebook page. “That’s 410 songs, (that I found on my hard drive).” He goes on to say that, “Out of all of them the Buildings Breeding songs are my favorites and back in September 2005 the first tracks were recorded. This September 2015 marks the 10th anniversary of these songs and we are playing some shows.” The group, who are originally from Davis but now reside in Southern California, have three celebratory shows lined up: Aug. 30 at Left of the Dial in Santa Ana, Sept. 2 at The Knockout in San Francisco, and the aforementioned Sept. 3 gig at Press Club, which will be their first show in Sacramento since 2009! The first 50 people through the door at Press will also receive a free copy of the band’s latest release Rad Dewd, a fantastic 10-track album that’s just begging to be the soundtrack to your next backyard summer shindig. Sharing the bill with Buildings Breeding will be two other great local acts, Arts & Leisure and Vasas. Show kicks off early at 7 p.m. and the cover is $7. 21-and-over only. Visit Facebook.com/buildingsbreeding for more info and Buildingsbreeding.bandcamp.com to sample some of their feel-good tunes. Welcome back, BB, we hope to see a lot more of you in the near future!

Flowerss is the new-ish electro-shoegaze project from Sacramento’s Christapher Larsen (formerly of Buildings Breeding) and Austin, Texas-based DJ Bird Peterson. Live shows feature an alternating cast that may include members Johnny Guttenberger (Far, Two Sheds), Kevin Dockter (Chelsea Wolfe), Justin Titsworth (Buildings Breeding) and Chris Robyn (Far, Crosses), making this the sort of group that you can catch a couple times live and not experience the same thing twice. Flowerss is re-releasing their 2012 album Charm on Feb. 19, 2013 with a few additional tracks on local label Test Pattern Records, who have released some of our favorite regional albums in the past year or two (Mixer by Desario, The Amador Frequency by Forever Goldrush). Test Pattern is putting out the CDs and increasing distribution to include iTunes and other digital outlets. Senescent Records, who originally put out Charm, will continue to sell the vinyl version. Fans of Pinback’s mellower stuff will really dig Charm, and even most Radiohead buffs will be able to get into it. It’s a fantastic album full of sparkly guitars drenched in reverb, dynamic builds, downtempo trip-hop beats that thump along leaving room for Larsen’s moody lyrics (he wrote these songs after the passing of his father in 2010) to really shine through. Hit up Testpatternrecords.com to give the album a whirl and for more information on how to order a physical copy.

A look at the Sacramento scene shake-up in 2009

It was a difficult year for the local musician as at least eight bands met their demise. Swansong shows were played, vans were crashed and relationships collapsed in bittersweet endings. The silver lining in the shambles of bands lost? As we transition into a new decade, we’ll be greeted by fresh and lovely new bands.

That’s how this thing works. Take last year’s demise of The Evening Episode. Had they not called it quits, Terra Lopez would not have gone on to create our beloved Sister Crayon and fill that indie-pop gap in our lives. For now, it’s the breakup that is fresh for these fallen bands. Only last month, Buildings Breeding unplugged from the scene, citing a lapse in dedication as its reason for departure. Vocalist and guitarist Chris Larsen said Buildings Breeding hit a rut after founding guitarist Evan Hart moved to Oakland.

“I can’t really pinpoint what it was that made the decision,” he said. “It seemed the better we’d get, the less people would care.”

Fresh off a May tour, the band experienced a transformation from its lo-fi roots into a polished songwriting style that would become its Kite Fire EP. A man down, the group brought in Kevin Dockter on guitar and Justin Titsworth on drums. “It made the band feel brand new; finally it felt like we had something,” he said. “Even our oldest songs were fresh again. It definitely gave us a second wind.”

Buildings Breeding booked an extensive tour for November to promote the EP, only to learn that three of its six members weren’t available to travel. The band attempted to have friends fill in as best it could, but Larsen said it was apparent from those reluctant moments the band was kaput. “Chris [Vogel] and I would speak every night,” Larsen said. “When we kept coming to the same decision, we knew we had to end it. We decided to honor what local shows we had and add two farewell shows.”

The farewell show happened so frequently this year it could have been considered a fad. Bright Light Fever played its final show at Harlow’s on Sept. 10. The group had a six-year run eulogized by a can of soda.

“We bought a six pack of Sunkist orange soda before we started pre-production on our first record,” Matt Ferro, Bright Light Fever’s guitarist, said. “We drank them all but one can and kept that can in our practice room as sort of a good luck charm for the whole time we were together. When we were loading up for our last show, we looked at it and—no joke—the expiration date was Sept. 10, 2009. Same day as our last show. Poured it out in the back parking lot of Harlow’s.”

It was to Bright Light Fever’s benefit they did not share the newly expired soda. The band’s lifespan was marred by unfortunate events the members wore like an honor badge sash. Within a month of its debut’s release in Oct. 2006 on Stolen Transmission (an offspring label of Island/Def Jam), Bright Light Fever lost its distribution. By July 2007, Bright Light Fever was dropped from Stolen Transmission. The group wrecked two vans in Wyoming on two separate tours. BLF self-recorded and self-released its second record, eventually putting it on the Internet for free download due to “months wasted on empty promises and overall snakery by outside parties.”

The band finally toured without losing money last November. Alas, its follow-up summer tour led to law enforcement issues in Arizona, hitting a deer in Omaha, eight of 12 shows paying nothing and its newest member quitting. “We all genuinely loved the band, so we did it for as long as we could keep our sanity,” Ferro said. “Honestly, all the bad luck inspired us to work harder at what we were doing.”

Punk band Blame Betty attempted to bear the brunt for four years. Lead singer Brooke Sobol said being in a band exposed her to a potential she never understood, but when your band is in a constant shuffle of members, the lack of dedication wanes the drive. The band burned through four drummers, four bassists and two lead guitarists. “The more we accomplished, the more I wanted to accomplish,” she said. “When the dust settled, we had a good, solid group for a long time.”

Blame Betty broke up in September. Sobol said she was exploring a business opportunity that monopolized her time. The stability of Blame Betty suffered. “I just couldn’t do both,” she said. “The pressure of being the front person got to be more than I wanted. I actually have stage fright. There’s a lot of pressure on the front person.” Sobol said she wants to be the girl standing next to the lead now—drinking a beer and playing her guitar like a crazy woman.

Buildings Breeding split without its inner-band relationship suffering. Larsen and drummer Melanie Glover are still together. “Being able to share music with my true love Melanie, it was at times difficult, but so incredible to see her grow as a musician,” Larsen said. This is the exception.

David Mohr found out the hard way when he split with Meg Larkin just before the summer, leaving Sacramento without its premiere dance duo, 20,000. “I tell people now not to be in a band with your significant other,” Mohr said. “People warned me. I should have taken their advice.”

When Mohr ended his six-year run with previous band Didley Squat, he said it felt like an actual breakup, the intimate kind; but losing his band and girlfriend in a breakup was a crushing blow to his psyche. To make matters worse, the laptop they used to make their music was Meg’s computer. Mohr tried to record on his old four-track, but found the process frustrating.

20,000 never had an official last show. The breakup happened amidst scheduled dates around Midtown, each of which drove the nail deeper into the coffin. Mohr remembers one show in particular at Luigi’s Fungarden. “I was dreading that show,” he said. “It was right after we broke up and the plan was to keep the band going. It was just too weird to get on stage with your ex-girlfriend and pretend to have a good time, pretend to be into the songs when really you’re done with it.”

So why is this happening? Mohr said he is concerned by an influx of negative energy. In Bright Light Fever’s bassist Don Suave, he astutely wrote in the band’s obituary, “it has been frustrating to see our fan base consistently waning while, from my point of view, the quality of our work has been consistently waxing. What I’m saying is, ‘It’s all your fault.'” Similarly, Larsen expressed a frustration with the abandonment that came with his band exploring hi-fi aesthetics.

“I think [the band] was let down by that fact because we were all extremely proud of the stuff we were creating together. Add the hopes of being signed to a new label and having them leaving you dead in the dirt, that is sure to shake any band up.”

Blame Betty spent two years convincing a club to let them play and brought 75 paying attendees out on a Thursday night, only to have the rest of the bill spot four people and split the door money. “[The club] didn’t return any of my calls to get another show booked there,” Sobol said. “But, the other band still does shows there.”

Let’s not forget the silver lining. With the dissolution of such great bands, an absence is left within the artist. As Ferro put it, “playing in a rock ‘n’ roll band makes you cool. Like smoking cigarettes. So right now, I’m lacking cool.”

He and his brother Evan immediately continued writing music under the moniker Roman Funeral. The duo hopes to record an album by the spring and tour in 2010. Larsen is doing a “solo-y thing,” while his ex- bandmates have taken to other local acts like bands with ex-The Matches members and playing with Chelsea Wolfe.

Mohr obtained a laptop and has released two free digital records as Favors. His new venture retains the 20,000 sound, but with a lot more heartbreak. He is currently practicing with Ben and Chris of Impotent Ninja, as well as Chris’s girlfriend, which made Mohr wary at first. “I definitely spoke to Chris about it, but I think they might be stronger than Meg and I,” he said. He hopes to do Favors shows by the summer.

Through all the bullshit, each band had no problem expressing its gratitude for the little moments shared among bandmates and fans. For Ferro of Bright Light Fever, it was traveling in a van across the country with brothers and close friends and taking a piss while your bandmates all meet Iggy Pop on a street in Texas. Larsen recalls the feeling after Buildings Breeding’s last show as he thought, “If this many people came to our shows all the time, I would never quit. I could just play Sacramento and Davis the rest of my life.” Sobol recently caught a show with her bandmates. They still flirt with the idea of reforming again, pending a lead singer shows up. Mohr is doing his best to remain friends with Larkin. As of this week, he hopes he can give his friends one last 20,000 record. The two finished, but never released, an album before the breakup. “Up until about a week ago, I didn’t want to get it out,” he said.

Though Sacramento’s Buildings Breeding Started as a Joke, the Band is Serious About Moving Forward

A perusal of Buildings Breeding’s Myspace page will show that the band has a sense of humor. The tagline under the band name describes the group’s genre as a fantastical mix of “healing & easylistening/religious/black metal.” Of course, even a brief listen to Buildings Breeding’s music reveals anything but. In place of these incongruous genres are dreamy male/female vocals bolstered by jangly pop melodies and swift percussive sensibilities. Perhaps “easylistening” isn’t too far off the mark, because the band’s songs are just so catchy.

Buildings Breeding’s ability to poke fun at itself may stem from the fact that the band started as a bit of a joke—albeit a romantic one. Frontman and founder Chris Larsen started the band as a way to confess his feelings for his girlfriend and now band mate, co-vocalist Melanie Glover. Larsen concocted Buildings Breeding as a fake band with its own Myspace page in order to reach out to Glover while she was abroad. This quirky back-story is a bit of a bane and a boon for Larsen.

“It’s kind of a silly story that we’re trying to get away from,” Larsen says with an uneasy laugh. “That story is haunting us our whole career.”

Whether the band was make-believe or not, its music struck a chord with Glover, and others as well. While still living in Davis, Larsen sent his songs out to Mushpot Records, which signed Buildings Breeding, even though it technically didn’t exist.

“I was pretending to be all these people. I submitted to them just as a joke, and they wanted to put out the record, so I was like, I better put together a band then,” Larsen explains.

“I don’t even know if I ever told them, because I didn’t want to ruin the chances of getting my record released.”

Now just a few years after Larsen conceived the band (he says he got the idea in 2006, but the group didn’t really come together until 2007), Buildings Breeding has bloomed from an inside joke to a bona fide five-piece with a bright future ahead of it. This month, the band will release its first nationally distributed album, In the Key of Calloused Fingers on venerable Bay Area indie Devil in the Woods. The album will be available on vinyl, limited to 300 copies (a digital version of the album was released April 28 and can be purchased via iTunes and other online music stores). The album is a compilation of older material from prior Buildings Breeding releases chosen by friends and fans and also some newer songs. Fittingly, Larsen says the title “¦Calloused Fingers also has a humorous connotation for the band.

“[The album] is kind of like a collection of what we’ve been doing for the past couple years,” he says. “We’ve been playing them so much, our hands are calloused.”

Using Myspace, Last.fm and other sites, Buildings Breeding put the “¦Calloused Fingers‘s tracklisting up to a vote. And in some cases, the band was surprised with what their fans chose.

“It brought some songs that—at least for me—weren’t first picks,” says Chris Vogel, Buildings Breeding’s bass player. “There were some songs that did really well off the self-titled [album], but some of the fans picked some of the deeper songs on that record, so it was nice to include them on “¦Calloused Fingers.”

According to Larsen, letting fans choose their favorite songs keyed the members of Buildings Breeding into which of the songs were working better than others.

“When you have people e-mailing you what songs they like, you kind of know what your live shows should sound like,” Larsen says. “There are some tracks that, in my heart, I thought people might like, but it definitely gets you on the right direction as to where to take the band. It’s obvious when you listen to this record, people like certain ways we go better than others.”
However, both Vogel and Larsen say that fan reaction alone won’t drive the music behind their next recording.

“I think what the fans were telling us by picking the songs was definitely important, but at the same time, we want to grow as a band,” Vogel says. “You can sit and make songs that everyone’s going to like all the time, but you’re just going to fail.”

Though the songs on “¦Calloused Fingers may be new to many people nationwide, Buildings Breeding are more than familiar with them. The band is looking forward to recording new material. Larsen hopes the band will re-enter the studio sometime after May.

Whether fan reaction plays any part in the road ahead for Buildings Breeding will remain to be seen. A larger affect on the direction of the band’s music will probably come from the band’s desire to write their next album together, as opposed to Larsen as primary songwriter.
“With five different people’s input, you don’t know where that’s going to take you,” Larsen says. “I think creating a record together will be the happiest thing we can do.”

Recently, Buildings Breeding was injected with new blood. Kevin Dockter stepped in on lead guitar and Justin Titsworth joined as the new drummer. Both members have had a big impact on the band. Vogel and Larsen both praise Dockter for his “tasteful” playing.

“Kevin instantly just opened up a new door for us with his guitar parts,” Larsen says. Kevin really embellished the songs.”

Meanwhile, Titsworth has taken the band to “the next level,” according to Larsen. Titsworth’s arrival allowed Glover to step out from behind the kit and be more upfront with her vocals, with out causing Buildings Breeding to lose anything rhythmically.

“Some of her songs are our best songs and fan favorites, our top sellers of whatever we sold in downloads,” Larsen says. “It really made me disgruntled to not be able to do that properly. It definitely changes everything to have everything we want going on while she’s singing.”
“I think we’re at a point with five members that we can branch out and bring some new stuff to the table that we haven’t been able to before,” Vogel adds.

With a solid roster in place, it would seem that the good humored members of Builidings Breeding have plenty reason to be resolute going forward—whichever direction their music takes them.